I MADE IT TO the Chicago train station by one o’clock and bought a round-trip ticket to Gary. I had to return to Chicago to fly back out to Atlanta. If I stayed over in Chicago another night, maybe I would call up Victoria for round three. I don’t know. I was capable of doing anything. I was a free man.

You would think I would be tired of sex after five nights of it in a row, but I wasn’t. I was getting along like a well-oiled machine. Even on the train ride I looked around at a few of the women and fantasized about taking one or two of them into the bathroom for a quickie.

I sat there in my seat and just shook my head. Having a threesome with Andrea was the worse thing I could have done to myself. I thought of every woman as a freak after that. Deep down inside, every one of them could be turned out. That’s what I was thinking, and it was terrible. I mean, I had always been after sex from a woman, like any other guy. It was only natural. But I rarely thought of them all as freaks.

A tall sister in a dark blue business suit and wire-rimmed glasses walked by and froze above my seat. She had clear, dark brown skin and her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

She said, “I know I know you from somewhere.”

I nodded to her. “Either from magazines or from billboards,” I told her.

She snapped her fingers and said, “You’re a model.”

“Yeah, what are you?” I asked her. There was an empty seat beside me next to the window. I asked, “You wanna sit down?”

She hesitated. “I really shouldn’t.”

She was right. I had the wrong thoughts for her in mind.

“Why not, it’s just a seat,” I told her anyway. It was like I couldn’t stop myself. I was on a devilish roll, I really was.

She said, “No, I was just, you know, saying hi.”

“All right, well, hi to you, too, then.”

She smiled and got to stepping. “Okay, well, ’bye.”

I nodded again and let her go without further discussion. You can’t have them all. I was glad she turned me down. But I knew I would have more opportunities in Gary; it was my home turf. The old neighborhood girls loved me there.

I made it to Gary safe and sound, and without taking a woman into the bathroom stall like I thought of doing. I arrived in the city and got a taxi to take me to my old stomping grounds on the West side. I climbed out of the car with my wheeled luggage and actually started walking the streets of Gary in search of old friends and memories.

I hadn’t been back out on the streets in years. Modeling was a very sheltered lifestyle if you manage to keep your money right, and I had. So the return to real life in the streets was refreshing.